Song of Myself, Section 50
There is that in me--I do not know what it is--but I know it is in me.
Wrench’d and sweaty--calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep--I sleep long.
I do not know it--it is without name--it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan--it is eternal life--it is Happiness.
As of a few days ago, it's officially summer, which means it's time to pull out your copy of "Song of Myself" and reacquaint yourself with its magic. I'm still not sure whether I've read this whole poem all the way through, as there are a lot of different versions (the first edition that Penguin publishes uses ellipses rather than dashes in section 50, as well as the conjunction "and" rather than commas in the last line; this is the version on the Poetry Foundation site). Either way, though, this poem is worth revisiting again. Why? This poem is truly American. "Song of Myself" predates the work of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound by about 50 years, but the first version (1855) even predates the Civil War; it's one of the first truly great American writings. Even beyond that, though, the narrator seems truly American: cocky and confident and daring all the way through, starting with the first line in the first section ("I celebrate myself, and sing myself") and continuing throughout with grand promises ("Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems," he says in section 2). In section 50 (the poem ends after section 52), the narrator finds happiness in transcendence--and what's more American than the happiness often promised in the American Dream?
Stop for a second and reread this section. Look at the dashes, which typically (and especially if Emily Dickinson has anything to say about it) signal a place for the reader to slow down or pause. Look at the "it" that Whitman uses. Sure, this is an ambiguous pronoun, but in Whitman's hands, it's used with purpose. The narrator says there's something in him, but: "I do not know what it is." This "it" is unnameable, a cause for the narrator to be "wrench'd and sweaty" and then "calm and cool." Lines six and seven are often hard to decipher because of their syntax, but look at the repetition of the word "swing," which sets up a parallel: "Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on"--this "it" is more tied to the "something" it swings on than the narrator is tied to the earth. And "embracing" this "awakens" him.
In the end, the narrator can only list what "it" is not, and a few of the things that "it" encompasses, including (capital-H) "Happiness." Ultimately, Section 50 of "Song of Myself" is about a transcendence that cannot literally be expressed in words. And for me, that's a relief: Transcendence is beyond what anyone can name--even Walt Whitman, though he does a damn good job at expressing this.
We'll be around more this summer, I hope. Go read "Song of Myself"--if you have the time.
